Detection of yeast species also occurring in substrates associated with animals and identification of a novel dimorphic species in Verbascum flowers from Georgia.

The molecular taxonomic analysis of yeasts isolated from Verbascum flowers collected in central Georgia identified strains that could be assigned to the species Cryptococcus adeliensis, Cryptococcus magnus and Moniliella megachiliensis detected previously also in substrates associated with insects and other animals and a hitherto undescribed species for which the name Candida verbasci is proposed. The new species forms slightly pink colonies, propagates by mostly unipolar budding, forms invasive pseudomycelium, and the sequences of its D1/D2 LSU rRNA genes and ITS1-5.8S-ITS2 regions indicate close phylogenetic relationship with a group of species that form a cluster basal to the Candida albicans/Lodderomyces elongisporus clade. The type strain is 11-1055(T). It has been deposited in Centralbureau voor Schimmelcultures (Utrecht, the Netherlands) as CBS 12699(T), the National Collection of Agricultural and Industrial Microorganisms (Budapest, Hungary) as NCAIM Y.02048(T) and the Culture Collection of Yeasts (Bratislava, Slovakia) as CCY 29-185-1(T). The GenBank accession numbers for nucleotide sequences of the C. verbasci type strain are: JX515981 (D1/D2 domain of the 26S rRNA gene) and JX515982 (ITS1-5.8S-ITS2). Mycobank: MB 801391.